Linear CEO Karri Saarinen on betting a company on quality: 'We can't win by just being faster'
soleio · x · 2026-11-05
Investor soleio's First of Kind podcast (S3E03) features Linear co-founder Karri Saarinen discussing his quality-first company philosophy. Key takeaways:
- "Quality is directional" — never a static bar, but an ongoing series of deliberate choices
- He still designs in Figma rather than code, keeping a designer-led workflow
- Own the problem itself, not just the solution
- His bull case for design in an agent-filled world: the interface remains a shared source of truth
- He argues against conventional MVPs — ship quality to define the category rather than rough prototypes for validation
The episode's core thesis: while everyone races on speed in the AI era, picking your own race and winning on quality is a viable strategy.
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